There is an obscure passage in a letter from Keats to Benjamin Bailey, written in 1817, which says:

This does not seem to make much sense. Nor does it help much to find an echo of that passage in the famous last lines of the Ode on a Grecian Urn, written two years later:

Non-classical science gives a very specific answer to the question of scientific errors and their epistemological value. But for all the specificity of this answer, it casts light on a problem that remains with us century after century, the historically constant problem of truth and error—one of the most fundamental problems of knowledge. At first sight, these two poles have always stood opposite each other, like good and evil, beauty and ugliness. But moral and aesthetic theories have long since left behind this initial conception, and shown that the two polar concepts are in fact inseparable. As regards truth and error, their indivisibility has only become apparent in the context of non-classical science. Truth has ceased to be the absolute contradiction of error. Contemporary science finds it to be something relative, inseparable from its opposite pole. But the non-classical, retrospective approach, a re-evaluation of the past of science in the light of its present, and indeed even more in the light of its prognosis, its future, allows one to see that scientific truths that are adequate for the object of knowledge always reflect only one side of the objective world, a world which has an infinite number of sides. The irreversible process that leads from relative error to relative truth has an absolute character: an irreversible process of generalization, concretization and complication of a Weltanschauung that more accurately reflects the infinite complexity of life.

Mythology is a very ancient, but at the same time a very vital form of creative fantasy. It is a dominant feature in the spiritual culture of primitive societies, and to some extent of ancient societies; it is the principal means of giving an overall sense to the world. In a primitive culture, mythology gives body to an as yet weakly differentiated syncretic unity of unconscious creation, primitive religion and the embryonic forms of pre-scientific notions about the surrounding world. Mythology provides the soil and the raw material for early forms of religion and of poetry.

Ever since the pioneering works by Chogyū Takayama and others in 1899 Japanese scholars have endeavored to elucidate the structure, meaning, and genetic connections of Japanese mythology, which was systematically described in the volumes on the “Age of Gods” of the Kojiki (compiled in 712 A.D.), the Nihon Shoki (720), and other works. In recent years the research has experienced a remarkable development, which owes much of its stimulation to the epoch-making studies of Indo-European mythologies by Georges Dumézil. For Japanese mythology betrays much in common with the Indo-European ones not only in its motifs but also in its basic structure, as we shall shortly see. In order not to be misleading, however, it should be stated here that analogies to Indo-European mythologies are but one aspect of the Japanese tradition, which comprises many other components, especially South Chinese and/or Southeast Asian components, and current researches on Japanese mythology are not restricted to comparisons with the Indo-European mythologies, but are undertaken through a variety of approaches, including those of the historian, the philologist, and the ethnologist.

It goes without saying that my intention is not to remind the reader that poetry exists. Everyone knows it. Instead, I propose to show that it is possible, from which it follows that it is. inevitable and that, being inevitable, it is justified. It is not. enough that a thing exist for it to be legitimate: it could be merely apparent, accidental or insignificant; it. could conceal some trick or have only a temporary justification. Even more, the same word—here, poetry—could have successively designated different activities which in the end had no important relationship with each other.

It was a tenacious dream: the first language spoken by man was music, poetry and science, all at the same time. In the beginning the same word, given by God or dictated by Nature, stood for things, feelings and laws. And in the cherished image of this dawning faculty not only had the distinction between word and song, the difference between expressive power and objective designational power (or “referential function,” as the linguists say) not yet appeared, but the sacred and profane uses of speech had not yet established their separate kingdoms: in the great festival of the earliest days each word was a celebrant and contained the substance of reality. The word, invested with an integral meaning, hit the mark and rejoiced at the contact. Everything to which man gave a name was a god to him or the delegate of a god, so that by virtue of a benevolent revelation or of an exact inspiration the earliest vocal expression combined the fullness of knowing with the musical fullness of its expressive power. But this language of Paradise, witness to an age when man was not separated from man or removed from Nature or from God, has long been forgotten, dismembered, dispersed. Multiple and incompatible idioms have taken its place. The clear light of meaning has become clouded.

This article tries to provide elements of discussion and reflection rather than answers to the following question: for many centuries or even millennia, man, at least in so far as prehistory and history have recorded it, made a close connection between the beautiful, the true and the useful and he sought an aesthetic response in the minute manifestations of his daily existence as well as of his intellectual life. Today, and even more so for just the past fifty or one hundred years, art seems to be relegated to specific domains, expelled from the daily life of the average person. Yesterday, and for centuries and millennia, mankind was not satisfied with the fact that a house, a temple, a church, a fortification or a castle were lodgings, proper places to hold reunions, strong-holds built for a particular purpose, it was equally important that they be beautiful; a key did not only have to open a lock, a carriage had not only to run, a bit to control a horse, spurs to reassure the rider, a glass pane to close a window, a table to have a place setting, a chest of drawers to contain clothes, clothes to cover the body, a pen to write, a manuscript to transmit the signs of the alphabet—no, it was also necessary that these signs, that manuscript, the pen, the spurs, the bit, the key … be designed and decorated in such a way so as to evoke in the persons who merely saw them, without even using them, an affective emotion of beauty. Nor was it enough that science or a technique be true or useful, they had also to be beautiful.

The attention of scientists is now being drawn to a new branch of knowledge known as the “philosophy of science.” It is true, however, that philosophers of this country are not very happy about this word combination and often identify it with logical, positivism. Indeed, it would seem better to speak not of the philosophy, but of the logic of scientific development. Science has become an object of study, and there has emerged metascience, i.e., a science studying the logic of scientific structures. This field of knowledge cannot so far boast of generally accepted results. But it has done something else: new acute questions have been formulated and discussed fruitfully and originally. With this paper we are making an attempt to enter the discussion. The philosophy of science has not certainly taught scientists to discover the truth but it has indubitably increased their criticism towards their own activities, and this is really a very important accomplishment.

A lone fish swims haphazardly in any direction, but. if we get enough fish of the same species together so that neighboring individual fish may exchange signals, they adopt a common direction. Here we have a phenomenon of cooperation: many individuals find themselves in strong interaction with each other, and overall behavior is noticeably affected.

Parallel to the New Left, whose influence on French public opinion is so pronounced today, a new academic movement has grown up in the United States in the last fifteen years. Its ideas are the portents of an intellectual and scientific revolution whose importance for the economic and political future of western society should be almost as great as the Keynesian revolution of the ‘30s.